Write What You Don’t Know

I’ve found that every seed for my writing has been planted because of something I don’t know. This began when I was young, and, rather than answer my endless questions, my parents chose to say things like, “You don’t want to know,” or, “It’s none of your business.”

Is there any better way to feed the imagination, especially the vivid imagination of a writer (or future writer)? Think about a circumstance where you saw or heard something out of context, or about which you’d never be able to learn more. Did you begin to imagine why this person had said this, or done that? Of course you did.

I’d argue that not just fiction, but memoir, too, begins is what we don’t know. Why did ___ do that to me? Why didn’t I fight back? Was no one else around? If so, what did they think? Or didn’t they care, and if so, why didn’t they?

I’m reminded, as I often am, of my favorite definition of fiction, from Robie McCauley and George Lanning’s Technique in Fiction:

Fiction originates in direct personal impression

linked by imagination

with the writer’s resources of experience.

Writing begins with that direct personal impression—something that resonates for you, personally, that in turn fires up your imagination. When you add your resources of experience—how you’ve felt when you’ve been happy, sad, angry, or lonely, for example—you can’t help but create a work—again, whether fiction or memoir—that will resonate with readers.

So don’t write what you know. Instead, write what you don’t know, and your imagination will take you—and your readers—places you’ve never been.